The Dredd by Ellington & Dyer was a really good one off. The sort of thing Wagner has done for years and it’s up to that standard. I do think Ellington is better when he is not paired with Boo Cook.
Although his Outlier/Outlander/can’t remember series wasn’t up to much.

Anderson by Grant & Marshall continues to be great little yarn, very much in the vein of classic Alan Grant on this one. It’s paced so well and reads effortlessly

Devlin Waugh is unfortunately really forgettable. Doesn’t bode well. I’m so glad Dowling is back working after the cancellation of Unfollowed but I’m not sure he’s the right artist for Waugh and he doesn’t turn in his best work here - to be fair to him, the script doesn’t give him much to work with

There’s a large critique on Frank Miller in the features section, which mentions critical revisionism on TDKSA, which is quite ironic because that’s what most of the writer’s article comes across as to someone who read most of this stuff as it was coming out, or not long after.

Dredd by Wyatt, Di Campi and Davidson is the sort of crap that nearly ended 2000ad in the 90s, only with added F words

Dominion by Wagner and Percival is a masterclass in atmospheric horror action

All in all a much better issue than last month and with the added bonus of Dredd Furies being finished I’m hoping for a decent replacement to get the comic right back on track

Edit -
And I’ve just remembered it’s Lawless, which is a bit like replacing Wayne Biggins with Henrik Larsson as your main striker.

Yeah, I posted one last thing Monday, so it should hit the slush pile today. It’s a proper old school kitchen sink comedy, but I’m not sure what the response to it will be, based on the Future Shocks published since mine.

Seriously though, if you’ve got something in mind, write it up and submit. What’s the worst that can happen?

Greysuits wrapped up well enough sadly that series appears to be over overall I really liked Bourne filtered through the Mills lens

Greysuit is a weird one. I have been getting 2000ad weekly since I got a tablet in mid 2011, so that’s 6 years and in that time they had one 10 part story that I mostly forgot, the previous one was in 2009, 8 years ago! (and before I was reading again). So I enjoyed the latest one as a kind of standalone spy gets revenge on his bosses thing as I had either not read or forgotten what went before with that mightily slow schedule.

I don’t know if it’s John Higgins is really slow/busy or Mills was waiting for inspiration.

I enjoyed the latest one as a kind of standalone spy gets revenge on his bosses thing

Agreed. Greysuit was a good, coherent action strip with proper weekly cliffhangers that allowed readers to return a week later having retained the plot in their heads. As you’d expect, Pat Mills sure knows how to write to the published format.

On the left, the current version of the 2000AD collection, on the right the “trial” version from earlier in the year:

Current version on the left, trial on the right again:

Some follow-up thoughts on this this, now I’ve got more to compare.

Overall, the new design works better. The changes are minor, but all for the good. The cover art gets very slightly cropped, but that means they could move the title over so it no longer disappears in the crease of the binding, which is good. And the loss of the little icon/portrait in the top left corner actually makes the design more elegant I think.

Inside there is no change to the content, front- or back-matter, endpapers, etc. There’s a very minor layout change on the copyright page, but who cares?

The only glaring difference is the spine illustration, and I assume they’ve only done this to force people to buy the first four again if they bought the trial! As I don’t know what the original painting was supposed to be, I don’t really care one way of the other that it’s changed.

The original trial editions seem to be going for £10 or less on ebay, but if you’re interested it’s just as easy to buy the new ones so I’m not sure why anyone would bother with ebay.

After disappointment called America I recently started to read Judge Dredd complete case files 01 - so refreshing and always welcome to see how it all started. Though surprised to see Dredd drawn by Mike McMahon, like it is not Dredd at all.

I think that the earlier Dredd’s aren’t necessarily that consistent. They were still feeling their way around. But that’s one of the great things about 2000AD. There is no house style. Mick McMahon can be on Dredd or Henry Flint or Brendan McCarthy or Carlos Ezquerra…or whoever. They have all brought their own style to the prog over 40 odd years

The same is true of the writers as well over 40 years. Some Dredd stories bring the black humour, or pathos, action or sheer horror. One of the first Dredd stories that I read was Necropolis…and that’s bleak as hell, although the art is amazing.